After leaving the National Security Council, Albright joined the academic staff of Georgetown University and advised Democratic candidates regarding foreign policy. After Clinton's victory in the 1992 presidential election, she helped assemble Clinton's National Security Council. In 1993, Clinton appointed her to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She held that position until 1997, when she succeeded Warren Christopher as Secretary of State. She served as Secretary of State until Clinton left office in 2001.

In January 1960, the couple moved to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a journalist, and Albright worked as a picture editor for Encyclopædia Britannica.[33] The following year, Joseph Albright began work at Newsday in New York City, and the couple moved to Garden City on Long Island.[34] That year, she gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright. The twins were born six weeks premature and required a long hospital stay. As a distraction, Albright began Russian classes at Hofstra University in the Village of Hempstead nearby.[34]

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Albright was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the U.N., she had a rocky relationship with the U.N. Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she criticized as "disengaged" and "neglect[ful]" of genocide in Rwanda.[52] Albright wrote: "My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes."[53]

In Shake Hands with the Devil, Roméo Dallaire claims that in 1994, in Albright's role as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., she avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" until overwhelmed by the evidence for it;[54] this is now how she describes these massacres in her memoirs.[52][55] She was instructed to support a reduction or withdrawal (something which never happened) of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda but was later given more flexibility.[55] Albright later remarked in PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda that "it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But when you were [there] at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda.""[56]

Also in 1996, after Cuban military pilots shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters, she announced, "This is not cojones. This is cowardice."[57] The line endeared her to President Clinton, who said it was "probably the most effective one-liner in the whole administration's foreign policy."[58]

In 1996, Albright entered into a secret pact with Richard Clarke, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin to overthrow U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 selection. After 15 U.S. peacekeepers died in a failed raid in Somalia in 1993, Boutros-Ghali became a political scapegoat in the United States.[59] They dubbed the pact "Operation Orient Express" to reflect their hope that other nations would join the United States.[60] Although every other member of the United Nations Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali, the United States refused to yield to international pressure to drop its lone veto. After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy and became the only U.N. Secretary-General ever to be denied a second term. The United States then fought a four-round veto duel with France, forcing it to back down and accept Kofi Annan as the next Secretary-General. In his memoirs, Clarke said that "the entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration."[60]

Secretary of State

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When Albright took office as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, she became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment.[61] Not being a natural-born citizen of the U.S., she was not eligible as a U.S. Presidential successor and was excluded from nuclear contingency plans.

According to several accounts, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in an April 1998 letter directly to Albright. Bushnell was ignored.[64] She later stated that when she spoke to Albright about the letter, she told her that it had not been shown to her.[65] In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke writes about an exchange with Albright several months after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" Clarke asked. "The Republicans in Congress will go after you." "First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies," Albright shot back. "I inherited them in the shape they were."[66]

In 1998, at the NATO summit, Albright articulated what became known as the "three Ds" of NATO, "which is no diminution of NATO, no discrimination and no duplication – because I think that we don't need any of those three "Ds" to happen."[67]

With NATO officers during NATO Ceremony of Accession of New Members, 1999

In February 1998, Albright partook in a town-hall style meeting at St. John Arena in Columbus where she, William Cohen, and Sandy Berger attempted to make the case for military action in Iraq. The crowd was disruptive, repeatedly drowning out the discussion with boos and anti-war chants. James Rubin downplayed the disruptions, claiming the crowd was supportive of a war policy.[68] Later that year, both Bill Clinton and Albright insisted that an attack on Saddam Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections. "Iraq has a simple choice. Reverse course or face the consequences," Albright said.[69]

In 2000, Albright became one of the highest level Western diplomats ever to meet Kim Jong-il, the then-leader of communist North Korea, during an official state visit to that country.[70]

In one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright on January 8, 2001, paid a farewell call on Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration on January 20, 2001.[71]

Post-Clinton administration

Following Albright's term as Secretary of State, many speculated that she might pursue a career in Czech politics. Czech President Václav Havel spoke openly about the possibility of Albright succeeding him. Albright was reportedly flattered, but denied ever seriously considering the possibility of running for office in her country of origin.[73]

In 2003, Albright accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2005, she declined to run for re-election to the board in the aftermath of the Richard Grasso compensation scandal, in which Grasso, the chairman of the NYSE Board of Directors, had been granted $187.5 million in compensation, with little governance by the board on which Albright sat. During the tenure of the interim chairman, John S. Reed, Albright served as chairwoman of the NYSE board's nominating and governance committee. Shortly after the appointment of the NYSE board's permanent chairman in 2005, Albright submitted her resignation.[77]

Albright endorsed and supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. Albright has been a close friend of Clinton and has served as an informal advisor on foreign policy matters. On December 1, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama nominated then-Senator Clinton for Albright's former post of Secretary of State.[88]

In September 2009, Albright opened an exhibition of her personal jewelry collection at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, which ran until January 2010.[89] In 2009 Albright also published the book Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box about her pins.

In August 2012, when speaking at an Obama campaign event in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Albright was asked the question "How long will you blame that previous administration for all of your problems?", to which she replied "Forever".[90][91] In October 2012, Albright appeared in a video on the official Twitter feed for the Democratic Party, responding to then-GOP candidate Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was the "number-one geopolitical foe" of the United States. According to Albright, Romney's statement was proof that he had "little understanding of what was actually going on in the 21st Century [and] he is not up to date and that is a very dangerous aspect [of his candidacy]".[92]

Controversies

Deaths by sanctions against Iraq

On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it."[103]
Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda"; said that her question was a loaded question;[104][105] wrote "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean";[106] and regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel".[103] Sanctions critics took Albright's failure to reframe the question as confirmation of the statistic.[106][107][108] The segment won an Emmy Award.[109][110]

In the context of the 1998 Iraq campaign, Albright expressed another justification: "But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."[111]

2003 Iraq War

According to Politifact, Albright opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, although after the U.S. was committed to the war, she said she would support the President.[112]

Art ownership lawsuit

Following the Washington Post's profile of Albright by Michael Dobbs, an Austrian man, Philipp Harmer, launched legal action against Albright, claiming her father, Josef Korbel, had illegally taken possession of artwork which belonged to his great-grandfather, Karl Nebrich.[113] Nebrich, a German-speaking Prague industrialist, was forced to abandon some of his possessions when ethnic Germans were expelled from the country after World War II under the Beneš decrees. His apartment, at 11 Hradčanská Street in Prague, was subsequently given to Korbel and his family, which they occupied before also being forced to flee to America. Harmer felt Korbel stole his great-grandfather's artwork, which was left in the apartment. The matter was handled by Albright's brother, John Korbel.[113]

Allegations of hate speech against Serbs

The place where the Prague incident took place.

In late October 2012, during a book signing in the Prague bookstore Palác Knih Luxor, Albright was visited by a group of activists from the Czech organization "Přátelé Srbů na Kosovu". She was filmed saying "Disgusting Serbs, get out!" to the Czech group, which had brought war photos to the signing, some of which showed Serbian victims of the Kosovo War in 1999. The protesters were expelled from the event when police arrived. Two videos of the incident were later posted by the group on their YouTube channel.[114][115] Filmmaker Emir Kusturica expressed thanks to Czech director Václav Dvořák for organizing and participating in the demonstration. Together with other protesters, Dvořák also reported Albright to the police, stating that she was spreading ethnic hatred and disrespect to the victims of the war.[116][117]

Albright's involvement in the NATO bombing of Serbia was the main cause of the demonstration – a sensitive topic which became even more controversial when it was revealed that her investment firm, Albright Capital Management, was preparing to bid in the proposed privatization of Kosovo's state-owned telecom and postal company, Post and Telecom of Kosovo. In an article published by the New York-based magazine Bloomberg Businessweek, it was estimated that the deal could be as large as €600 million. Serbia opposed the sale, and intended to file a lawsuit to block it, alleging that the rights of former Serbian employees were not respected.[118]

Clinton campaign comment

Albright supported Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. While introducing Clinton at a campaign event in New Hampshire ahead of that state's primary, Albright said, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other" (a phrase Albright had used on several previous occasions in other contexts).[119] The remark was seen as a rebuke of younger women who supported Clinton's primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, which many women found "startling and offensive."[120] In a New York Timesop-ed published several days after the remark, Albright said: "I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line. I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender."[119]

Honorary degrees and awards

Medlin Olbrajt Square in Prishtinë, Kosovo named in honour of Madeleine Albright

Personal life

Albright was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism at the time of her marriage in 1959. Albright's parents had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941, during Albright's early childhood.[8] When The Washington Post reported on Albright's Jewish heritage shortly after she had become Secretary of State in 1997, Albright called the report a "'major surprise.'"[132] Albright has stated that she did not learn until age 59[133] that her parents were originally Jewish and that as many as a dozen of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia—including three of her grandparents—had died in the Holocaust.[13][14][134]

Albright has mentioned her physical fitness and exercise regimen in several interviews. In 2006, she said she was capable of leg pressing 400 pounds.[135][136]

Albright was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013.[137]